


Seeing Red

by Wirrrn



Category: 28 Days Later (2002)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-24 22:06:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16648712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wirrrn/pseuds/Wirrrn
Summary: Whilst Selena's out, so too are the guys. Set around day 29-30, before the trip to Jim's house puts a squib on the sexy times.





	Seeing Red

"Why should hate be less vital than love?  
And what of it, even if it were?   
The exhaustion of the cell  
is the vigour of the organism..."  
-George Orwell, NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR

 

"We do not hate you. There is need for hate in  
our world. Or love. Or fear. Or happiness.   
There is only Survival. The purpose of life is   
Survival."  
-INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERS (1978)

 

"They will rise and kill. Ahhahahahaha!  
Rise and Kill! Rise and Kill! Rise and Kill!"  
-DAWN OF THE MUMMY

 

"Comes the blind Fury, with th'abhorred shears,  
And splits the thin-spun life..."  
-Milton

* * * * 

 

Selena had gone through into the Mall proper, declaring she'd rather face an entire Underground filled with the Infected rather than their ubiquitous chocolate bars for dinner. Muttering orgasmicallyabout roast pumpkin, baked yams and bangers, the young woman had arched her tired, sable neck until it made a satisfying pop, then made ready.

She strode to the rear of the small candy store and opened the storm gate at the rear that separated it from the rest of the Shopping Complex and gave all three of them unpleasant DAWN OF THE DEAD associations. 

The gate had rolled up into the ceiling with a godawful, reverberating crash- and the three survivors winced and stood very still; adopting the increasingly second-nature attitude of strained silence, waiting to see whether the corridors beyond would fill with roaring, crimson-eyed shadows.

Nothing. 

Selena had given a tense smile to the boys and gone through the gate, shopping basket under one arm, machete in either hand.

Half a minute after the gate had ceased juddering in its jamb from her hurried exit, Jim and Mark were naked on the floor and entwined together amidst the crisp packets, soda cans and plastic-bagged bagels.

In the murky prehistory that was a month ago, they might have had to worry about mice.

Mark moaned into Jim's mouth as the slighter man rolled them over, entangling their legs with a movement he then converted into a short, chopping thrust that brought their cocks together, and pressed their bodies all along their length.

The two men lost themselves to mindless, frenzied pumping for eternal, sweaty minutes. Roiling about on the sea of empty confectionary packets, grinning together as they jockeyed each other's nude forms for the top position, they eventually compromised by rolling onto their sides and pulling each other flush.

Teeth nuzzled nipples, fingers toyed with scant body hair, tongues slid like fat, clever slugs down through coarse Rorschach whorls to dip briefly into navels before continuing lower. 

All too soon both men arched into tensed, bow shapes, locked into their positions and grunted hoarsely as they emptied themselves onto salt-sheened bellies.

Jim gulped in a huge breath, waited for the room to stop spinning quite so aggressively, and poked Mark's chest. When the other man just burbled and tightened his hug, Jim grinned to himself and pulled a fallen piece of licorice from the downy skin in the small of Mark's back with his teeth, letting his incisors graze the flesh of the other man's buttocks just slightly before flicking the candy into his mouth with his tongue, lathing Mark's buns as he did so.

"-Is there something I've done to deserve this torture, or are you trying to be erotic?"

Jim propped himself up on one elbow and smiled down at the other man. "Hey, if Selena walked in on us right now, which one of us do you think she'd machete first?"

Mark rubbed at his eyes. He hadn't pegged Jim as a post-coital talker. Not that he really minded. Any normally-modulated human voice was music to his ears these days. Sometimes he woke at night with that god-awful hoarse shriek still howling at him from his nightmares.

And sometimes the furious howling from voices ruined by screaming that ripped him from sleep came roaring up from the streets outside.

That was even worse than the dreams.

"-I wasn't aware 'machete' had become a verb. Anyway, why would Selena do th-oh, you mean because of this?"

He waved a hand down at their joined, come-spattered bodies. 

"...She already knows, Jim love. Matter of fact, we spent the day after we first found you arguing whether you were cut or not." A playful tug at Jim's still sticky cock. "I win."

Jim moves back down into the other man's arms,tracing the strong bones of his face with long, pallid fingers. "So you and Selena aren't-"

"...No! Even if I played on her team, I am so far from being her type it's not funny." A puzzled expression tickled the corners of his mouth and brow like a thirsty but cautious butterfly. "Do she and I look like a couple?"

"I dunno; do you and *I* look like one?" 

-at Mark's raised eyebrow he corrected himself. "I mean in less horizontal circumstances."

"...I'm not sure. We'd have to ask an impartial observer."

"Good luck finding anybody."

Mark gathered him close.

Jim, smile now nothing more than a fragile ghost haunting his lips, surrendered to the other man's hug, gladly.

"...There are others. We're not alone. I told you, you were the first Uninfected person we'd seen in six days; we have seen others."

"You also told me they're all dead now."

Mark stroked his brow. "...Yeah, well you're not like them, Jim love. I can tell you're a smart one. You won't forget to avoid shadows, closed buildings. You won't wander off in the middle of the night to go for a piss somewhere private. You'll not run into a Police Station and yell at the top of your lungs for the Authorities to get their arses in gear and make the streets safe again. I've got a good feelin' about you, Jim. You'll make it."

"What happened to the other survivors you met, anyway? Like that one in the Police station?"

Marks eyes slid away as he shuddered, involuntarily. As he shivered, he accidentally jabbed Jim's ankle with a toenail. "...Sorry."

"No problem. It was that bad?"

The other man's eyes glazed as he surveyed the country of memory. "...Sixteen or more Infected were sheltering in the holding cells out back. When Brian went off his nut, started yelling... Drew them to him like wasps to an open pop bottle." Mike batted a crumpled soda can with oustretched fingers. "...There wasn't anything recognizable to bury, so Selena and I just torched the station. Their howls brought dozens more... we got out by the skin of our teeth."

Jim flinched at the ghosts that gibbered and whorled in those haunted eyes. "Noise attracts them?"

"...Hadn't you noticed?"

//the priest vomiting huge gouts of virus-hot blood, crawling down the vestry hall towards him impeded not at all by the broken back hands clawed to prey not pray red eyes burning as it screamed for him whilst he screamed for it to stop please just stop...//

Jim blinked. "I seem to recall a few moments."

Mark was gently stroking his bare legs up and down Jim's own, both men soothed by the sussurus rasp of their coarse-haired calves. "...I think it's how they track us. God knows those terrible eyes can't be of much use, at least by day. Noise seems to enrage them; well, enrage them further, but seems to also help them lock onto us."

"What makes you think their eyes are poor in daylight?"

"... Their vision would be impaired. All that blood in their irises, forcing the pupils to dilate wide in bright sunshine? They'd be nearly blind, and in great pain. No wonder they prefer the shadows..."

Mark broke off with a wry grin. "...Sorry, Jim love. Three years of Veterinary Science. It doesn't take much for me to slip into Discovery Channel mode."

Jim cocked an eyebrow. "You were a Vet?"

"...No, I dropped out after a year. I didn't have the stomach for vivisection."

"Irony"

"...Is a bitter mistress, yeah. Selena says she's heard this all started at some Black Ops Laboratory that was into dodgy animal research. Just think- if I'd been a little better at keeping down my lunch during practical exams, I could have been at Hot Zone Central, a month ago."

Jim pulled the other man close, kissed him breathless. "I'm glad you weren't. I've got a vested interest in your arse now. You may be the Last Man on Earth for me..." He is trying to be funny, but his smile is sick and his laugh stillborn.

Mark looks him in the eye "...They're out there, Jim love. We can't be the only ones left... There'll be other people like you, that the Virus missed."

"I was the only living soul in that entire hospital. I got the feeling I was a statistical aberration. The only reason I didn't wake up dead -or worse- was because I was behind a locked door." 

"...Still, there must be someone. People in high-rise penthouses, maybe, or out in the country- somewhere less populated." 

Jim planted a soft kiss on the other man's chest, determined to comfort him with actions, if not words.

"I wish I could believe that. But the only Uninfected I've seen so far apart from you and Selena were that bunch of corpses in the Church, in the Infected's larder."

"...Larder?"

"For want of another word."

"... So the infected were...eating them?"

"Well no, I just assumed. I mean they *are* zombies!" He looked over at Mark. "You don't think they're flesh-eaters?"

"...I don't think so. I'm thinking back, but I can't remember seeing the Infected *eating* their victims. Killing them, sure, but using them as food? No- I think we've just seen too many Romero movies. The Infected are people. Not ghouls. They're *us*."

"But, the Church..."

"...Can you actually recall seeing the Infected gnawing on them?"

Jim looked back. "...There were bodies, everywhere. Flies..."

"...Flies would indicate the bodies were rotting, were being left to rot. I know that Church... it's not the only charnel house the Infected have created. And I've never seen any bodies used for sustai-"

"-Wait; there are *more* places with...all those bodies?"

"...Yes. Did you never wonder why there aren't all that many bodies out on the streets? They horde them, Like ruddy pack-rats. Picadilly Circus, Hampstead Heath, Kew- in the greenhouse with the Corpse Flower in it- you can't smell the bloom now, for the real thing- Kensington Palace-"

"*Jesus*!"

Mark nodded grimly. "...Yeah; makes you think, don't it? If they can get there, where can't they get? This was early on, mind, before the telly stopped receiving a signal. The news wouldn't say which of them brought the virus there -only that it wasn't Her Maj- and that they're all dead. I wonder if their blood really was  
blue..."

Gallows humour tugged at Jim's lips. "I reckon Blair took it to them- he always liked bloodshed; look how fast he chucked us in at the Gulf."

Mark's volley of surprised laughter wheeled around the room like a startled bat. "...Quite! But all the corpses they've been taking; I haven't seen any marks inflicted post mortem; no damage to the bodies except that from normal decomposition. I'm almost sure they just kill you and leave you where you lie. I doubt they're even capable of feeding on us."

"What do you mean?"

"...They don't seem to eat *at all*.It's not that they don't need nutrition- like I said, they're alive, not undead. I suspect they no longer have the sentience required to *know* they need to eat, let alone to feed themselves. That locked room you were in, at the hospital? Did it have an Observation window?"

Jim thought back. "Fuck, it did! But they didn't smash it..."

"...Beacuse you weren't moving; it didn't occur to them that you were viable prey. Even if it had, I doubt they could have worked out how to open the door, locked or not."

Mark's warm breath accompanies his words, fluttering hot on Jim's face, but they are spoken in a dead monotone- their temperature is the only heat about them.

"...They don't think, Jim. They don't reason, or plan, or hurt. They just *rage*. Selena and I have watched them, sometimes, from high or hidden vantage points. When there's nobody around for them to tear up, they just...stand there. Huge groups of them, just standing. Totally still. Totally blank. It's eerie. They don't sleep, don't fight among themselves, don't make a sound. Just that endless waiting."

Jim paled. "Nothing to stimulate them."

Mark exhaled again, this time leaning over and huffing warm breath onto Jim's chest, a humid, chocolate -scented zephyr that tickled its way down his skin and pulled a moan and a wriggle from him. 

Jim hoisted himself on top of the other man, kissed him deeply and slid down the pale body to sit himself on Mark's proud, juddering cock. He began to move up and down, describing erotic geometry with the circling of his hips.

Mark gasped out the rest of his theory in ragged grunts, trying to stop himself from coming there and then. His mouth found Jim's and he alternated kisses with words.

"...So you see... the Infected don't... Uhh... don't eat us... they don't feel hunger... or... Oh, God Jim!...Pain or anything but...hate... No rational...thought...they're...God!....vessels, Jim love.... living, walking vessels of Fury..."

Mark gave up talking and thrust up into the man intimately impaled on him. Jim stopped moving, just for a moment.

"Not able to think, huh love? I guess I can relate..."

And for once, Mark's night-world was full of pleasurable moans, and they were so, so much better than the screams.

 

\-----------------------------end-----------------------

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, this was a weird one. But I just saw the movie recently and was impressed by both the not-zombie zombies and the amount of male nudity in it. Fun! Almost- but not quite- a PWP, as a bit of mise-en-scène and banter got in there too :D
> 
> Dedication: As always, this is for Colton Haynes.


End file.
